Can’t Sleep

And the streetlight visible outside my window is flickering. On again off again. A blinking eye. Noises from the world have invaded my unconsciousness. I have heard rain for seven days and seven nights, now, always washing down from the sky. Now there are new sounds.

Doors opening.

Whispers.

Footsteps.

In the glow of the words on my screen I see patterns when I turn my head, eyes and faces. A man looks back at me, turned on his side, dead and with his hands bound behind his back. Pale and with dark circles under his eyes. Something squeaks and squeals; heavy bars clang and echo — the sound of things locked away, down dark hallways, struggling to come loose, come up, get free.

I am bathed in a glow of pale blue. The monitor is vast and without teeth, a mouth open wide, receiving me. My pretty little whore, sucking up the words out of my mind, my tongue, my fingertips. Committing it to memory.

Blinking green light on the answering machine. Sweet voices that love me. There’s that door again, and a low, steady pulse, a whirring like machinery that breathes. I have come alive within the dreams; I haven’t slept in a thousand days. The world doesn’t move around me anymore — it moves through me.

What was your last nightmare?

The streetlight outside just went out again. Slowly but surely, all the light outside my window is going out. One by one by one by one, until not even the strange haze of orange arc sodium is left.

Something’s crawling near my foot; I can hear it whispering. Conspiring with the thing that’s been breathing cold against my neck.

The opening doors and all the whispers are the things that dream of me; I’m having a hard time telling what’s mine anymore.